I wrote this last year, back in October but never got around to posting it. It didn’t seem right to go onto other memories and holidays from days gone past without posting this one first. Better late than never.

Holidays bring out many memories. Halloween is one of these. Most of my recollections of Halloween come from the time we lived on Miriam Street in Swissvale. I was in the third or fourth grade at that time. We would dress up in whatever costumes our mother would somehow manage to put together. There were no “store bought” outfits for us back then, just a cowboy hat and toy gun with holster or maybe a frilly dress with a crown to match. Our trick or treat bags were old pillow cases. At least that hasn’t changed over the years.

We would anxiously wait until it got dark. Then the doors opened and a flood of children began to descend upon the neighbors’ homes. There were no dark front porches. Some homes were known to be much better than others. We loved the people who gave the full size candy bars. These were the days before the mini-bars and “fun size” pieces. And since all of the parents were too busy, handing out candy and it was still safe for children to go outside after dark by themselves, many a candy bar was consumed in between homes. I know that was the case with Denise and me.

There were several homes which were substandard in our eyes. These were the loose candy and apple givers. The first would take a small handful of candy corn or a couple of wrapped caramel squares and drop it in the middle of our bags. The other were the people who bought a bushel or two of apples from the road side farmers market and smilingly give each of us one. Somehow that smile always remember me of the evil queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Now these were not Delicious apples or Granny Smith or any of the tart, juicy apples that you find in the grocery stores. No, these were one step above crab apples, mushy, tasteless and in some cases, the skins beginning to wrinkle. They may have been good for apple pies or apple sauce, but these apples were the lowest of the low on the trick or treat scale. The people would drop these apples live a bomb, smashing the Hershey bars and other chocolate sweets as they worked their way to the bottom of the bags.

Still, overall we did quite well, filling up bags, going home to empty them and heading back out for more. Imagine our dismay when we figured out that Mom was taking the candy we brought home and giving it out to the next set of costumed munchkins knocking at the door. Worse yet, she was taking the good candy, not the puny apples, so that we wouldn’t look cheap to the neighbors. We would even take the apples from our pillow cases and put them in the bowl to be distributed to the trick or treaters but Mom never took the hint. Time to resort to Plan B where we quickly grabbed the best candy bars and stuffed them in our pockets, before returning home. Once there, we would drop the bags and race upstairs to the bathroom, with a slight trip to the bedroom to hide the good stuff. Oh, Mom probably knew what was happening but what’s Halloween without a little tricking?